Whatever, Whenever
by quietGOLD
Summary: Sam had made a promise to a broken man. One-shot. Spoilers.


She still remembers the first time he phoned her. His voice had been low, his words stumbling over drunken lips. He had cried softly over the line, wishing he could have done something – anything.

"If I had been there, maybe they wouldn't have..."

Run off. Fled into the snowy night of the mountain. Disappeared – as if the mountain itself had consumed them.

"Josh, hey. There was nothing you could have done," she had whispered.

He had been silent on the other line for what felt like ages, and then his voice had crackled across the line – it was the barest ghost of a voice. "Maybe I deserve this."

The brilliant light that had been Josh Washington had been extinguished. Gone were the days of wide smiles and uncomplicated laughter. There was a shadow that hung over him. His life had persisted beyond his misery. He dreamed of wooded groves and soaring cliffs; of laughter and fear and hardship. Of a prank that had seen his family rent in two.

His misery had persisted into the cool lick of revenge.

No one could have anticipated the slow spiral. Even Sam, as present as she had been through the sleepless nights, and long and silent phone calls, couldn't have anticipated the descent into madness. He had been overcome, and his view of reality had been distorted by grief.

Where once they had sent Hannah and Beth running into the dark of night, Josh had created a perverse reality that saw them helpless and isolated and afraid. He had duplicated and transformed the perversity of their own twisted circle. He had won. Josh Washington had destroyed them.

But even with the villain of their own twisted story caught, the mountain had come for them as it had come for Beth and Hannah. The truth of the wooded groves surrounding the estate had made itself known. There were monsters darker than the monster they had found amongst themselves.

In the end they had only themselves to blame. Dawn brought with it the promise of survival, and as they left the cool peaks of the Rocky Mountains aboard a rescue helicopter, they had turned their eyes from the blackened crags, the dark and shadowy places where they knew the mine twisted and turned underneath. One by one their eyes had met, and in each there was a stillness.

"Are you the only survivors? Is there anyone else?" One of the Fire and Rescue Officers had asked.

Sam looked to Mike, eyes wide and jaw tight.

"We're the only ones," Mike had whispered. "There is nothing left."

Sam glanced down, her eyes wide as she beheld the dark and shadowed hole of the mine's throat.

There had been no knife, no gun. There had been only the cold. They had left him. Alive and alone and broken. The mountain had taken him, but only because of their inaction. They had murdered Josh Washington.

In the end it is her guilt that drives her. Guilt and a promise – a promise she had made in the dark of night and in the bright of day. She had murmured it to him over and over again, whispering it into his ear as he cried against her neck and held her to him.

"We'll always be here for you. _I'll_ always be here for you. Whatever you need. Whenever you need it."

"Promise?" He had begged.

"Yes."

She had meant it, and even with the events of the past month having driven her to her own sleepless nights and therapy sessions, she still meant it.

"Whatever, whenever," she whispers, her breath clouding in front of her face. The cold is more severe than when she had last set foot on the mountain's face, but there is something reassuring about the chill.

It lent a silence to the night.

A silence that is shattered by a shrill and dangerous cry. It was him.

Despite familiarizing herself with the equipment over the past few weeks, it is strange to be wearing it in a place as unforgiving as the snowy groves of the mountain. She adjusts the straps on her back, grimacing at the awkward weight of the canisters pressing against her spine even through the thickness of her fireproof jacket. The attached gun feels like an awkward third limb at her hip, but she knows it is the only thing she can depend on now. Her life, her future had been dictated by the phone calls and quiet moments she spent with him. Her words had to have meaning, even now.

Especially now.

She glances down at the aged notebook in her hand, the pages ashy and cool against her skin.

 _The Wendigo must be contained._

"Whatever you need, whenever you need it. Until dawn and again."

She pulls the flamethrower's gun from the holster at her hip and begins her walk into the long dark.


End file.
